MODERN ARCHITECTURE

1. FAGUS FACTORY
Architect: Walter Gropius, Adolf Meyer
Duration: 1911 – 1913
Location: Alfeld, Germany
Materials: Steel, brick masonry, glass

• It is considered as a blue-print of the functional design style that later became associated with
the Bauhaus.
• Today the entire factory has been renovated and is open to the public.

2. REITVELD SCHRODER HOUSE

Architect: Gerrit Reitveld
Duration: 1924 – 1925
Location: Utrecht, The Netherlands
Materials: steel beams and columns, wood & concrete

• Composition of abstract planes, with projecting roofs and balconies.

• The house has two levels. The lower floor consists of the kitchen/dining/living area, a reading
room, a studio space which until 1933 Gerrit Reitveld used for his own office, the servant’s
bedroom, and a storage room. The upper floor was considered attic space according to the
building code. All the sleeping areas were located up in that space and the bedrooms were
divided only by portable partitions.
• ‘red and blue chair’. The horizontal and vertical line doesn’t obstruct or intersect with each other
– allowing the lines to exist independently.

3. KARL-MARX-HOF
Architect: Karl Ehn
Duration: 1927 – 1929
Location: Vienna, Austria
Materials: Brick
• The Karl-Marx-Hof is the longest contiguous residential building in the world at over one
kilometer in length (1100m).
• Designed for a population of about 5,000, the premises include many amenities, including
laundry mats, baths, kindergartens, a library, doctor offices, and business offices.
• 1,382 apartments (with a size of 30-60 sq. m. each)
4. DE LA WARR PAVILION
Architect: Eric Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff
Duration: 1935
Location: Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, England, UK
Materials: Steel and concrete

• Streamlined form curvaceous in plan slender columns, stacked planes horizontally.

• The De La Warr Pavilion was the UK’s first public building built in the Modernist Style.
• Upon it re-opening this autumn, DLWP will have:
- One of the largest contemporary art galleries in South East England
- An fine auditorium seating up to 1,000 people
- A large, new studio space.
- Roof and ground floor terraces, including an award winning bandstand
• A first-class café, bar and restaurant with outdoor sun terraces
• A shop specializing in books and merchandise on arts and culture
• Indoor and outdoor spaces to sit, relax and enjoy panoramic sea views.

5. AEG TURBINE FACTORY

Architect: Peter Behrens
Duration: 1910
Location: Berlin, Germany
Materials: Glass and steel with masonry

• Glass and iron took over a workshop of an industrial plant, with an enormous span

6. BAUHAUS
Architect: Walter Gropius
Duration: 1919 to 1925
Location: Dessau, Germany
Materials: Glass

• The Bauhaus is one of the first colleges of design. It came into being from the merger of the
Weimar Academy of Arts and the Weimar School of Arts and Crafts. It was founded by Walter
Gropius in 1919 and was closed in 1933 by the Nazis.
7. GERMAN PAVILION
Architect: Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe
Duration: Built 1928 – 1929, demolished 1930
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Materials: Steel frame with glass and polished stone

• An icon of the Modern movement. Free plan exemplar. Rebuilt in 1959 to the original design.

8. BARCELONA CHAIR
• The Barcelona chair by Mies Van der Rohe was
designed for the 1929 World Exposition in
Barcelona. Mies Van der Rohe used leather straps
to suspend leather-covered cushions from a
chrome plated steel frame.
• The Barcelona chair was a custom design created
for the King and Queen of Spain.
• Even so, we think of the Barcelona chair as
Modernist. With this chair, Mies van der Rohe
made an important artistic statement. He showed
how negative space could be used to transform a
functional item into sculpture.

9. VILLA SAVOYE
Architect: Le Corbusier
Duration: 1928 – 1929
Location: Poissy-sur-Seine, France
Materials: concrete and plastered unit masonry

• The house was emblematic of Le Corbusier work, wherein it addressed “The Five Points”, his
basic tenets of a new aesthetic of architecture constructed in reinforced concrete:
1. The pilotis, of ground-level supporting columns, elevate the building from the damp earth
allowing the garden to flow beneath.
2. A flat roof terrace reclaims the area of the building site for domestic purposes, including
a garden area.
3. The free plan, made possible by the elimination of load-bearing walls, consists of
partitions placed where they are needed without regard for those on adjoining levels.
4. Horizontal windows provide even illumination and ventilation.
5. The freely-designed façade, unconstrained by load bearing considerations, consists of a
thin skin of wall and windows.
10. GROPIUS HOUSE
Architect: Walter Gropius
Duration: 1937 – 1938
Location: Lincoln, Massachusetts
Materials: wood frame, vertical wood siding

• The structure of the house consists of the traditional light wood frame of New England, sheathed
with white painted clapboard siding: only in this case the siding runs vertically instead of
horizontally. Rough fieldstone walls, like those employed in the seaside house built around this
time at Cohasset, are here not yet incorporated into the structure of the house itself.

11. ST. MARY’S AXE

Architect: Norman Foster
Duration: 2000 – 2004
Location: London, England
Materials: Glass cladding

• The Swiss Re tower, nicknamed the Gherkin for its tall,

rounded, pickle-like shape.

12. FUJI BROADCASTING CENTER

Architect: Kenzo Tange
Duration: Circa 1990
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Materials: Metal cladding

• Square tubes and blocks megastructure with sphere.

13. BANK OF CHINA

Architect: I.M. Pei
Duration: 1982 – 1990
Location: Hongkong
Materials: Steel frame, glass curtain wall

• Triangular bracing and step-backs are structural adaptation

to the high wind loads caused by Hongkong typhoons.
14. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright
Duration: 1956 – 1959
Location: New York
Materials: Concrete

• Unique spiral ramping gallery, sculptural massing. Faces across the street to the Central Park.
Parent institution of the Guggenheim Bilbao by Frank Gehry.

15. HANCOCK TOWER

Architect: I.M. Pei
Duration: 1977
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Materials: steel frame and glass curtain wall

• With Henry N. Cobb. Reflective obelisk skyscraper. Famous

glazing problems.

LUDWIG MIES VAN DER ROHE

• (March 27, 1886 – August 17,1969) was a German-American architect.
• Believing that “less is more”, Mies Van der Rohe designed rational, minimalist skyscrapers that
set the standard for modernist design.
• Worked in the office of Bruno Paul I Berlin
• Spent four years in the studio of Peter Behrens
• He called his buildings “skin and bones” architecture. He sought a rational approach that would
guide the creative process of architectural design and is known for his use of the aphorisms “less
is more” and “God is in the details”.
• Introduced Ribbon Windows – in 1992 Mies introduced the concept of ribbon windows,
uninterrupted bands of glass between the finished faces of concrete slabs, in a design for a
German office building. That has since become the basis for many commercial structures.

ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY’S CROWN HALL

• This is a single glass-walled room measuring 120 feet by 220 feet and spanned by four huge
trusses. The structure appears to do no more than to enclose space, a feeling reinforced by its
interior movable partitions. It was one of the 20 buildings that Mies designed for the school’s
100-acre campus on Chicago’s South Side. Crown hall is a good example as many Mies’ “skin-
and-bones architecture”, a phrase that he once used to describe his point of view.
THE CHICAGO FEDERAL CENTER
• The Chicago Federal Center is actually a
collection of three Mies’ buildings. The rigid
simplicity of the back geometry is considered
one of the finest expressions of the ‘Second
Chicago School’. The Center compromises the
Everett Mckinley Dirksen Building; the John C.
Kluczynski Federal Building; and the Loop Post
Office.

SEAGRAM BUILDING
• One of Mies structure, accounted among his outstanding
ones, is the 18-storey dark bronze and pinkish-gray glass
Seagram Building on Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd
streets. The building, which was designed in association
with Philip C Johnson, has been called by appreciative
critics the city’s most tranquil tower and “the most
beautiful curtain-wall building in America”. It emphasizes
pure line, fine materials, and exact detailing inside and
out.

MILLENNIUM ARCHITECTURE
1. Post-Modernism
2. High-tech Architecture – sci-fi flavor & constant exposure of technology.
3. Deconstructivism - a will to shock in which dislocation & fragmentation are highly valued.
4. Return to Traditional, vernacular & classical architecture.
Millennium Architects:
- Frank Gehry
- Rem Koolhaas
- Santiago Calatrava
- Daniel Libeskind
- Zaha Hadid
- Herzog & De Mueron
POST MODERNISM
• Premise: Destruction of memory threatens human dignity and identity
• Robert Venturi wrote “complexity and contradiction” (1966) and recommended a revival of the
“presence of the past”

Post Modern Architects and their styles:

1. Neo-modernist – Richard Meier and 4. Post Modern Classicism
Aldo Rossi - Charles Moore: Piazza d’Italia, New
2. New Baroque Flavor – SOM (Skidmore, Orleans, Louisana (1980)
Owings & Merrill)
- Empire State Building, NY (1986)

- Michael Graves: Portland Public

Service Building, Oregon (1982) –
Egyptian Art Deco

3. Mannerism – Philip Johnson

- AT&T Building, NY (1984)

- Edward Genter: J. Paul Getty Museum,

CA (1975)

- Glass House (1962)

- Richard Bofill: Palace of Abraxas, Marne – La – Vallee (1983)

5. Neo Constructivist
- James Stirling: New Building & Chamber Theatre, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (1983)

6. Ironic Play of Historical References – Ioeh Ming Pei ex. Pyramide du Louvre, Paris (1983) –
Late Modern + Renaissance

MILLENNIUM ARCHITECTS

1. Daniel Libeskind
• Wohlcentre, South Korea
• Imperial War Museum North, England
• London Metropolitan University Graduate Center, England
• Reflections at Keppel Bay, Singapore
• Vanke Pavilion, Italy
• Felix Nussbaum Haus, Germany
• Runrun Shaw Creative Media Centre, Hongkong
• 18.36.54, Connecticut
• The Villa
• Century Spire, Philippines
• Dancing Towers, South Korea

2. Frank Gehry
• Guggenheim Museum, Spain
• Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles
• Dancing House, Czech Republic
• 8 Spruce Street, New York
• Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris
• Weisman Art Musuem, Minnesota
3. Herzog & De Meuron
• Allianz Arena, Germany
• Beiijin National Stadium, China
• Prada Store, Japan
• Elbe Philharmonic Hall, Germany

4. Remment Lucas Koolhaas

• Netherlands Dance Theatre, The Netherlands
• Lille Grand Palais, France
• Maison À Bordeaux, France
• Educatorium, The Netherlands

5. Santiago Calatrava
• Samuel Beckett Bridge, Ireland
• Palau de Las Arts Reina Sofia, Spain
• Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin
• Auditorio de Tenerife, Spain

6. Zaha Hadid
• Vitra Fire Station, Germany
• London Aquatics Center, United Kingdom
• Phaeno Science Center, Germany
• Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center, Azerbaijan